T_292
The work as shown. Every value below comes from vae.db, the master database of the Crucible Year.
Recorded
- Date
- 2026.05.07, day 130
- Size
- 97 × 180 cm
- Paper
- S12, Red Star Mo She Special Effect Xieyi, half-raw
- Inks
- MB4, MB5, MB6
- Phase
- P2 The Switch
- Shown on the site
- yes (V23 rating of 5.0 or higher)
- Early storage triage
- SA: save, archive (Peter's early system, since retired)
Measured · V23 (v23.8)
- V23 rating
- 7
- Form
- 2.6
- Tonal depth
- 2.6
- Layering
- 2
- Composition
- 2.8
- Material and surface
- 1.4
- Ink cover
- 75%
- Dark share
- 43%
- Tonal steps
- 6
- Flaws named by the reads
- other 10, water stain 4
Older engine
- V7
- 8
How the number was made
Read by the Visual Analysis Engine, version 23.8, on 2026.10.06: measured by code, then read 5 times by Claude Opus 5.5 against three reference paintings (R1 to R3), each read independent of the others. How the engine works.
Three views of one sheet.
Left, the photograph. Centre, the tone stretch the model is shown beside it: the darkest 45% of tones spread over the whole range, so flat black, banding and stains show. Right, every pixel as the measuring code classes it: cyan black ink, deep teal translucent grey, stone the palest ink, near black bare paper.
6 families of tone.
Every inked pixel's brightness in 64 bins, smoothed; each circled peak holds at least 4% of the ink. Life inside the black: 0.072 (under 0.045 reads as flat).
Five reads, agreeing on 1 of 5 qualities.
Each quality placed on its ladder by each read, and the mean the engine keeps. Where reads differ, they differ by one rung; close calls resolve down.
READ 1, IN ITS OWN WORDS
“A single strong crescent sweep with banded tonal life and a shaped white void. The arc's blunt right terminal, the modest layering and the creases in the paper keep it near the archive average, a little above R2.”
The great arc from upper left to right holds its walls and follows the stroke, but the squared block at the right end is blunt and slab-like.
WEAKEST Stiff rectangular block terminating the arc at right
STRONGEST Main sweeping black arc following the brush travel
Bristle-track bands and stepped density run through the dark arc, there are graded greys in the lower wash, and six tonal steps. The darkest right end is the flattest area.
WEAKEST Densest black at right end of arc nearly flat
STRONGEST Banded bristle arcs running inside the dark sweep
There are about three passes: a grey sweep, the black arc and dry-brush ends. The overlaps are legible at the upper right and lower right, but the sequence does not build depth across the whole sheet.
WEAKEST Cloudy grey wash under arc reads indistinctly
STRONGEST Black arc over translucent grey band, upper right
One arc carries the eye from the left edge, across the top and down to the lower right. The white void below it is a shaped form that works as hard as the ink. The scattered left edge is weaker.
WEAKEST Scattered splinter marks at left edge
STRONGEST Crescent sweep wrapping a shaped white void
The ink is controlled and dry-brush is used at the right. Crease lines cross the dark mass in the top centre, and a slightly cloudy grey sits under the arc. Both are modest.
WEAKEST Paper creases across dark arc interior
STRONGEST Dry-brush feathering at lower right arc ends
3 distinct places, 1 major.
Each read must name every flaw and where it is, in a ninth of the sheet. Here the reads named flaws in 3 distinct places, 14 mentions in all across 5 reads; the number in each ninth is how many times a flaw was named there. Reads agreeing on a place strengthen the evidence for one flaw; they do not multiply it. A major flaw holds Material and surface at rung 1.
Measured from the 16-bit master.
The previous engine (V22) measured this sheet's master file: 1 principal ink mass traced (cyan), 6 enclosed voids at true size in their grid cells (amber), the main gesture from start to end (red). Of 14 edge segments, 43% crisp, 21% soft or bloomed, 36% broken.
Tonal depth held at rung 1.
6 steps: not appliedMaterial held at rung 1. Mild waves in the unmounted paper are never a flaw.
3 major flaws: appliedThe rating cannot exceed 4.
lowest 1.4A read that breaks the reply format is discarded.
5 of 5 validV23 rating 7.0.
Engine v23.8, 5 reads. Fixed arithmetic, the same for every painting; the constants were set on 24 randomly chosen paintings so the median sheet scores 5. The scale is relative to this archive, not to painting in general, and a difference of less than half a point between two paintings is noise.